D id it happen this way? The land lay
like stone, and one night, all night
long, rain pelted down on it the way peo-
ple, they say, hammer hard on a stone to
find blood. And in the morning the land
was cut in two by a deep flow of creek,
clotted with red weed-Gavin Highly's
creek.
But all this was a long time ago. I did
not know back then that hearts could be
laid out like land and cut in two by storms
coming out of the sky, or that dreams
could be thrown, as Gavin Highly threw
the ashes of his fire or his oyster shells or
his old tins and bottles or his scraps of
food, deep into the dark flowing divided
heart to be buried there. I did not know,
and my brother did not know. We cared
more about plums-ah, they were yellow
and dusty blue and hung on trees, over
Gavin Highly's fence, and in the early au-
tumn the sun burned on each plum till its
tight yellow or blue dusty skin gave in and
rolled up like a blind to let in more sun.
The plums split and were ripe and we ate
them and, if Gavin Highly caught us, all
he said, in one breath, was "Hop-it-you."
I think he understood about plums.
He lived alone; apparently, he had al-
ways lived alone. The story was that he
had been up Central, living in a rabbit
burrow, where a rabbit kept house for
him and he invited ferrets, kindly ones,
in for afternoon tea. But of course that
sort of story couldn't be believed by real-
ists. Still, it was true that he had never
lived in an actual house. A tent, yes, and
huts and, when he was small, in a room
with an iron bed, top and tail at night
with brothers and sisters, but never a real
house. His dwelling now was a hut with
a hole in the roof to satisfY the needs of
smoke wanting to go out, and with old
bulging beer barrels, corseted by rusty
iron hoops, placed at strategic points
around the outside walls, to act as down-
pipe and spouting. There wasn't even a
step to the door. Going inside was like
climbing a mountain, though I had never
been inside and could only guess. People
said that there were books everywhere,
on shelves, under chairs, on chairs-the
chairs were two-and tied with binder
twine in bags under the bed. Gavin
Highly collected and loved books. No
one had ever really seen these books, but
hearsay had it that they were worth thou-
sands of pounds and, if ever Gavin
<3 wanted to have his dream and live in a
proper house with a proper downpipe
and spouting and taps inside and waste
pipes under the sink and hot water, why,
all hè d need to do was sell his books.
And the selling, word went around,
would have to happen very soon, for
Gavin's hut had been condemned by the
Health Inspector, and ifhe had no money
to buy a house he would have to go to jail
or to an old peoplè s home, where hè d eat
boiled mutton all the time and no oysters.
And folks knew how much Gavin Highly
liked oysters-indeed, he ate so many that
he could have become one. He was in
league with them, surely. But then he was
the kind of man who is in league with
many things-ahnost everything except
people. For him, there was no way, it
seemed, of being in league with people, as
he was with the birds, shabby starlings,
their feathers worn and shiny green from
flight, or with the frogs that in early au-
tumn made the creek vocally sinister with
their croaking, handless and cold, their
pale-yellow-and-cream ballooning throats
propped upon the surface of the water, or
with the trees, willows that knew when-
ever their limbs failed, and lived near the
creek, so as to be able to drop their dead
parts down for burying.
Was that why Gavin Highly, too,
lived so close to the creek? Tip, splash
went the ashes from his fire every morn-
ing; whizzbang went the pork-and-bean
tins. Till the Health Inspector made a
visit. He was a narrow man, like a
shadow, the sort of man who slips under
doors and through keyholes, or else how
could he have known that our dog,
Lassie, slept in our bedroom?
"I have had complaints," he said to
Mother on one visit. "There are dogs in
and out of your windows. You have
a. . . lady dog, I understand."
Yes, the Health Inspector was a
sneaky sort of man, and I felt sorry for old
Gavin Highly when I heard my parents
talking about him.
"They say the place is a disgrace. Full
of books and oyster shells," a lady said to
my mother. This lady came and drank
tea and then knitted tea cozies and hot-
water-bottle covers for bazaars, while
Mother watched and wished that she
could knit and crochet, but I did not like
the knitting woman. Come to think of it,
I wasn't much in league with people, ei-
ther, and so I pitied poor Gavin Highly
having to sell all his precious books or
else sit in jail with a bowl of bread and
water. But I soon put him out of my
mind, for a little while, anyway. My
brother had a new sled with a patented
speedometer, which read, true or false,
ninety miles an hour.
O ne morning, it was autumn and the
li ttle polished acorn bullets were
knocking down hard on the roof of the
shed, and it was breakfast time, with my
father eating porridge, my mother sew-
ing a quick patch onto Dad's work pants,
my brother putting the kindling wood in
the coal house, and me still sitting, past
porridge and halfway through bread and
treacle, and suddenly my father stopped
eating and said, "Today' s the day."
A silly, obvious remark. Of course
today was the day-for me, the day of
sycamore windmills. The sycamore seeds
were brittle and thin as a fly's wings, but
they could whizz, and today was the day
of whizzing. But I knew that my father
was not talking about that.
I took another piece of bread and
treacle.
"You have hollow legs," my father re-
marked absently, but in my curiosity
about today's being the day I felt no spe-
cial pride in this anatomical wonder,
which my father quite frequently assured
me that I possessed.
He continued, "I hear Gavin Highly
is selling his books today. He's making
quite a fuss about it, advertising and all
that. Therè s a van calling to take them to
the auction room, and this morning an
expert is coming to look at the collection
and price it. Half the town'll be there
1: "
lor sure.
How could I forget that day? There
was a light-blue morning wind blowing
and thistledown flying loose along the
tops of the clouds and larks going up and
down, up and down, in the shining lift of
the sky.
Poor Gavin Highly. I did not see any-
thing that happened, but I know, I tell
you, I know that it happened this way.
rroward noon Gavin Highly began to
1. prepare a number of packing cases
at his front and only door. The cases
were labelled "Soap Powder," "Tinned
Beans," or "Sunkissed Oranges." All
would eventually contain books, mil-
lions' worth, folks said, and old Highly
would be someone, richer than anyone in
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 5, 2010 65